Hagne Shikabane Senki
by hunanyian
Summary: On the world we call our twin, our Morning Star, humanity has survived. However, the regrets and the unforgiven sins of the past are rebounding, unleashing a war between not only nations, but the living and the dead. And standing at the center of this storm, a young woman will pay the cost to have her vengeance, while in turn a young man will give his due for redemption.


**- ****Hagne Shikabane Senki ****-**

A retelling of _Shikabane Hime_

in a fushion of _Fullmetal Alchemist _and _Venus Wars_

)"^"(

_**Prologue**_

**July 7th, 171 Anno Renatus (A.R.)**

**Io, Republic of Aphrodia**

**Aphrodite Terra, Venus**

He could hear the gurgle of water...smell the chalky sweet odor of the sulfur...taste the briney flavor of salt...see the relfective, bluish tinge of the sillicon...and feel the raw coursing energy that broke them, and the other ingrediants, down to a molecular level, swirling and fusing them as they were slammed back together, forming what they called upon...what all of this was exchanged for...

...except the payback was only screams and blood...

...And the light as the Gate opened, a portal as old as existence, dropping him into the churning cauldron of jubilation that not only burned away his eyes, but every sensory organ of his body, seeping further into his mind. The knowledge, the Truth, filled every nueron of his brain, but it was no where near enough to contain, bursting forth like a virus infected cell...

...Shooting Ouri out of slumber as fast as a sidereal-engine launched voidclads into the heavens between the interplanetary settlements of humanity. Coated in the sweat of his nightmares, yet again, the adolescent found that even though it was his birthday, the terrors of his subconscious would not even gift him that date free of their taunting. Breathing deep to wrap his racing heart with a calming blanket of his world's arid air, he glanced about the chaotic mess of sleeping bags, candy, and his younger 'siblings'. The clutter of his four sisters and four brothers - ranging from a few years past toddlerhood to a fellow teen, skinny Winry Mizuki - were in fact all piled on him, sleeping away on his chest or wrapped about his limbs; made family through their orphaned status, and reared together on the grounds of the Dai-Rin House of Child Welfare. At least this was the case for as far back as he could remember, since everything from before he was seven or so was sealed away and dropped into an unreachable depth of his mind. The walled off orphanage, situated in a crummy neighborhood of Aphrodia's capital, was all he had ever known.

Something grabbed his attention. Pushing off the kids, Ouri twisted around to see a small silhouette outside the window of his home's living room. Forcing his still waking golden eyes to focus, he saw whatever it was step inside, and to his astonishment, literally passing through the closed pane of glass, shimmering slightly as it defied matter, entering like a ghost. The four legged creature sat upon the floor at the edge of the mound of immature human slumber, its eyes shinning with the faint light of the stars and the more obvious illumination of the city. The realization it was a cat hit him, the black furred and white bellied one that haunted him, frequently catching the creature in the corner of his eye or just off in the distance; and 'haunting' was accurate since he knew the animal was dead, the life crushed out of his old pet by the tires of a jeep back when he first came to Dai-Rin. Despite the ethereal nature of his former pet, and how he gazed him right in the eye, Ouri wasn't the least bit put back. He was long use to the feline's presence, though that date was rather auspicious, since he never came this close, never remained this constant. The encounter went further still, as the cat motioned his head toward the door, then paced after his nod, all as if it was an invitation to follow.

Ouri, whether out of curiosity or simply some gut instinct, indeed went after the cat. Lifting his skinny and what some people, much to his annoyance, likened to a short heighted body, brushed his good hand through a head of unruly shaggy brown hair, and used the same appendage to wipe off the last remnants of sleep from his face of mixed features, springing from both the European and Asian continents of lost Earth. Though of the same heritage as most Aphrodians, he bucked the norm in possessing rather light skin compared to his browner countrymen, in addition to his odd eye color; most who settled Venus's southern continent developed a mutation of red pigmented irises. Stretching in his pajama shirt and shorts, he forgot himself, letting out a mechanical snap as he extended his prosthetic limb of automail. Most of his left leg was replaced by an intricate collection of electric motors and pneumatic actuators, hooked to his nervous system and coated in a protective casing of the highly durable, black colored Mercurial steel called Nigredo, further decorated and empowered by etchings of the kanji-like Zadan script. Gritting his teeth out of frustration and embarrassment, Ouri sent his eyes scanning about to see if he awoke any of the other orphans, and viewing no evidence of such, stealthfully went after his furry guide.

Out in the gloom, the sky was submerged in the growing night, which over the next few dates would slowly get pitcher as the life giving Sun sunk over the horizon. By the standards of the Terran Calender, it took little over half a month to cycle through a full Cytherean 'day and night', thanks to the planet's slow retrograde spin. This length use to span even longer, before the Moonfall destroyed humanity's home world. However, Venus was shaped into a new home out of this cosmic disaster, when a massive piece of the moon collided into 'Earth's Twin', clearing out its once noxious and baking atmosphere; it also increased its rotation, aided by a huge Lunar chunk that became captured in the 'Morning Star's' orbit, which Ouri could see, a celestial shard traveling across the heavens, trailed by smaller fragments, nicknamed Luna's Tear's - said to show the Moon's grief at the harm done to her old world's children, but also cried for the joy of them surviving.

To the west, human manufactured illumination would help get the population through the long night. The closely packed together skyline of Io provided a constant nimbus, allowing him to grudgingly see his way along the engawa, circling the squat, two floored building of gray-green Taurean Stone. This highly resistant substance, one of the alchemical Zodiac Materials, made through the transmuting art of Zadan, was a mainstay of Cytherean construction, allowing humanity's structures to endure the planet's vicious acid-rainfalls. The cylinder-shaped and dome topped skyscrapers, ascending from the city center, were made of a purer variety of the stonework, shining nearly an emerald hue. Other materials glinted in the a nocturnal glow as well, such as the windows of strong, flexible, and ever so purplish-blue tinted Picean Glass; plus the greenish-yellow crystalline Leonite used to form buttresses, spires, and gargoyles, which absorbed the ambient light and generated it into electricity for the high rises.

As well as serving as a home for parentless children, the Dai-Rin shared its walled off grounds with a temple of Ishvala. The center of worship's pagodas and stupas rose around him, shaped from the aboreal product of another Zodiac Material. Zadan was used to grow the ghostly white wood of the Virgoan Trees, sprouting leaves and fruit the color of sapphires. Though there was much of the actual timber used to panel the temple, the sap was the primary extract. Just as durable as its acid resistant pulp, the blue resin was hardened and carved into the desired form, such as the boards of the cloisters Ouri walked.

The yard actually had a small grove of Virgoans, sheltering the large gorinto, around which the ashes of the dead could be returned to the Great Mother as with their departed spirit. He usually felt a comfort in the presence of the grave site, spending hours sitting in it when he was younger, paying no mind to taunts or the concern of adults, flying into a rage if they tried to remove him; but he couldn't help but feel an unease that twilight, as though it was a physical omen of what awaited him. Still, he was drawn on, arriving at the temple's main sanctuary, its 'womb'. At the entrance, the youth realized his feline lead had vanished, but the flickering flames of the candles within took his mind off the question of the shade's location.

Pushing aside the sliding doors, Ouri called out, "You there, Brother?" He wondered if the temple's head monk was in, tending to the shrine, when he saw a sight that robbed his breath.

Before the statue of Ishvala - the serene faced mother, represented by a young woman in a bejeweled sari, sitting crosslegged before a carved mandala brimming with her symbology - laid a girl. She was utterly still and dressed in a long sleeved top and jeans, which were badly torn, exposing numerous bloody gashes.

He instantly dropped to her side, "What happen to you?" And looking past her mane of purple dyed hair, held out of her face by some of its length pulled into a pair of braids, he saw she was about his own age; and physically fit, athetically speaking with an emphisis on 'was', considering her wounds. If not for slashes and bruises marring her face, her stillness could be mistook for a peaceful slumber with her almond eyes closed as they were.

Reaching out to grasp her wrist, he felt pallid flesh utterly devoid of warmth, "You're ice cold." Fearing the worst, he bent an ear to catch a heartbeat, and without it picking up a single thump his horrified fears were realized. Ouri lept back, "You're dead", aghast at being right next to a dead person. "I mean she's passed on", trying to sound more respectful, especially before the principle depiction of Ishvala.

He continued to stare at the body in disbelief, wondering why 'it' was here. _Was there some kind of accident? Who is she and why is she here all alone? _The questions gnawed at his mind, sitting there stiff as the corpse before him, unable to take his eyes off the lifeless youth.

Approaching footsteps, pounding with a quickness and fret, sent Ouri hiding behind the statue. It didn't take a genius to figure out he stumbled across something he shouldn't have.

"You must stop this!" A strangers voice demanded as the door was slammed open, witnessing the battered and bandaged form of his 'big brother', Keisei, stumble through, assisted by another monk, a shaven headed man he didn't know. His voice cautioned Keisei again, "Guardian, please, you can't. Guardian, there's nothing you can do in your condition."

In spite of his severe limp, Keisei pressed on. His midnight blue robes of the Kougun Sect he belonged to, held by a sash of striped earthtone colors, fluttered about his tall, broad-shouldered frame; but the garments did not appear worn, even though his large hands and wrists, and probably traveling further up, were wrapped in calligraphy marked panaceum bandages, absorbing the still flowing blood as they in turn soaked healing medicines and pain-killers into his skin. More wounds were concealed by panaceum patches along the cheeks of his slender jawed face and another soiled wrap about his brow. Spiky, sandy brown colored hair jabbed out like always, just like his rainbow hued sunglasses still hid his understanding eyes - made of Geminian Crystal, the shades allowed him access to the communications net of the Stream, though knowing Keisei, he used it to view his extensive library of downloaded smut (which he denied with a laugh of course.)

Two others followed, and peering out from his cover, Ouri recognized the one in the lead, a thin and ditached looking man, whose hair fell to his neck, and donned a hooded cloak over his own robes. _He's the one who comes from the head temple sometimes. His name is Shirai, I think. _He told Keisei, "The bond has already been broken."

As the quartet of clergy stood over the body, the youth couldn't fathom what was going on, how all of this was connected, especially to Keisei. _And the other guy was calling Brother 'Guardian'? And where did he get those injuries? What the hell is going on here!_

"Curious one, aren't you", a quiet voice stated, with an undertone of darkly amusement. Shifting around, he saw the cat had returned, just sitting calmly, gazing up at him with eyes that seemed to contain all the answers he saught, but wouldn't share a single one. "She's Shikabane." Though no words, or any sound emerged from its mouth, the teen knew the statements had originated from the animal.

"Wha..." Ouri bewilderedly questioned, but swallowed the rest of the word, chiding himself to keep quiet.

The feline continued to 'talk', again carrying that cryptic edge, "Something else you'll get fascinated with, soon enough."

"Guardian Tagami." The voice of Shirai, calling his brother by his family name, snapped his attention back to the monks.

Keisei, not heading a word of his compatriots, knelt down to the body, rolling her flat on her back. "Its my lack of skills that caused the bond to begin to break", and ripped open her shirt, followed by squeezing some blood from his own wounds. Painting a circle of Zadan script over her heart, his voice filled with determination, "Still, its not too late."

"You'd be better off to wait for a new one", the fourth monk broke his silence. He'd been the one who trailed Shirai, an arrogant looking man with his hair sheared away and marked by a swirling blue tattoo.

His brother sternly declared, "She's not an object, Honda."

Applying pressure to her chest, he gasped, and a crackle of red energy pored out from the monk and into the dead girl, who absorbed it along with the bloody calligraphy. With the ritual finished, he picked her up, tenderly holding her to his chest and resting a cheek a top her head, closing his worry strewn eyes.

Ouri, for starters, was stunned to see his brother use Zadan, the metaphysical art to alter the material universe through Rune - the energy of existence itself. Some called it the power of whatever gods they believed in, the very essence of divinity, while the more secular minded chalked it up to a higher understanding of the cosmos, a manipulation of forces that bound it all together. Either way, it was the foundation of modern technology and science, allowing humanity to escape the devistation of the Moonfall. He experienced the second shock as he watched the dead girl's fingers twitch, her eyes flutter open, raising them with great effort to a very relieved Keisei. Uttering his name, she added, "I'm sorry." He gave no verbal reply, just hugging her closer as the other monks leaned in, a bit awestruck themselves.

_I was certain she was dead_, Ouri couldn't believe it. She was ice cold. No heartbeat. No breath. Yet there she was, alive.

Witnessing this 'resurrection' broke through the surface of the icy amnesia blocking his memories, reaching down and grasping something deep from within those forgotten depths. Ringed by the high heights of mountains, he stood on a dirt road, in front of an isolated home, half built underground to help withstand the harsh deserts of the Cytherean wilderness, and more amazingly, his body was whole - both legs, both of flesh and blood. Across from him was a boy, no older than six, same yellow irises, same mousy hair...and lighting flashed, ripping through the very fabric of space-time, shredding reality as it disintegrated his leg...but these same archs of destruction devoured the other boy whole, welling up a horrified grief that seized his heart and crushed any hope it contained...

When the flashback subsided, he was leaning against the back of the shrine, frozen, staring the cat right in its sad, but judging eyes. All he could think, all he could feel, was he committed a gross violation, a crime against the 'Qaan', creation itself. _And did I just see another? _A lesson from school on Zadan surfaced, _"Human transmutation, and the manipulation of the so-called 'soul', is not only impossible, but forbidden, an utter blasphemy against the laws of both humankind and the Qaan."_


End file.
